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Many people are able to recognize the personality traits of the person they are talking to by their facial features. Experts in non-verbal communication can do this even with a photograph. But is it possible to teach artificial intelligence to do the same?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world have faced an unprecedented crisis. The cataclysm has impacted Russia as well. Who will better deal the hardships—experienced baby boomers, Gen Xers who survived the 1990s, or Gen Yers who have had an easy life?

In lockdowns, why do some people stay home, while others violate the quarantine rules and go out for picnics in the park? Behavioural economics may provide the answer to this question. Oksana Zinchenko, a Research Fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, explains how we can predict people’s behaviour with game theory.

Article

Национальная гордость и субъективное благополучие россиян

Since the beginning of the 2000s, subjective well-being of the Russians was growing due to growing incomes and strengthening optimism about the future. However, the worsening economic situation following the crisis in 2008 did not cause the expected fall in subjective well-being rates. One plausible explanation is the growth of national pride. In this paper, it is tested whether or not national pride positively and causally affect happiness and life satisfaction of Russians. Possible compensatory properties of national pride — its hypothetical stronger effect for individuals with low incomes and poor health — are also being investigated.
Data: integrated database of the World Values Survey and the European Values Study containing survey data for Russia from 1990 to 2017. Methods: linear regression with instrumental variables. Results: the effect of national pride on subjective well-being is positive and statistically significant (β = 0.26, p-value < 0.001), the effect persists while using instrumental variables (β = 0.92, p-value < 0.001); the effect is stronger in the period after 2008, as well as for people with low incomes.

This article analyzes the decline of subjective well-being and a sense of national self-esteem among the Russian people that was linked with the collapse of the communist economic, political and social systems in the 1990s—and a subsequent recovery of subjective well-being that began more recently. Subjective well-being is closely linked with economic development, democracy and physical health. The people of rich countries tend show higher levels than those of poor countries, but already in 1982, the Russia people ranked lower on happiness and life satisfaction than the people of much poorer countries such as Nigeria or India; external signs of this malaise were rising alcoholism and declining male life expectancy. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, subjective well-being in Russia fell to levels never seen before, reaching a low point in 1995 when most Russians described themselves as unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives as a whole. Since 2000, this trend has been reversing itself, but in 2011 Russia still ranked slightly lower than its level in 1981.

The purpose of this article is to analyze similarities and differences in values between Russians and other Europeans. In doing so, we plan to compare Russia with other countries in terms of average values indexes; to investigate in detail precisely what subgroups within the country, from perspective of the values they share, make up the Russian population (we assume that this analysis will show similarities and differences between the residents of various countries in greater detail than a comparison of averages); to reveal, using multiple regression analysis, the role of various determinants that influence values; and to determine the correlation between the influence of individuals’ country and their sociodemographic characteristics.

Can self-assessments of health reveal the true health differentials between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’? The potential sources of bias include psychological adaptation to ill-health, socioeconomic covariates of health reporting errors and income measurement errors. We propose an estimation method to reduce the bias by isolating the component of self-assessed health that is explicable in terms of objective health indicators and allowing for broader dimensions of economic welfare than captured by current incomes. On applying our method to survey data for Russia we find a pronounced (nonlinear) economic gradient in health status that is not evident in the raw data. This is largely attributable to the health effects of age, education and location.

This paper discusses correlations between certain genetic characterestics of the human populations and their aggregate levels of tolerance and happiness. We argue that a major cause of the systematic clustering of genetic characteristics may be climatic conditions linked with relatively high or low levels of parasite. This may lead certain populations to develop gene pools linked with different levels of avoidance of strangers, which helped shape different cultures, both of which eventually helped shape economic development. Still more recently, this combination of distinctive cultural and economic and perhaps genetic factors has led some societies to more readily adopt gender equality and high levels of social tolerance, than others. More tolerant societies tend to be happier because they create a more relaxed environment conducive to happiness.

This paper examines correlations between the genetic characteristics of human populations and their aggregate levels of tolerance and happiness. A metadata analysis of genetic polymorphisms supports the interpretation that a major cause of the systematic clustering of genetic characteristics may be climatic conditions linked with relatively high or low levels of parasite vulnerability. This led vulnerable populations to develop gene pools conducive to avoidance of strangers, while less-vulnerable populations developed gene pools linked with lower levels of avoidance. This, in turn, helped shape distinctive cultures and subsequent economic development. Survey evidence from 48 countries included in the World Values Survey suggests that a combination of cultural, economic and genetic factors has made some societies more tolerant of outsiders and more predisposed to accept gender equality than others. These relatively tolerant societies also tend to be happier, partly because tolerance creates a less stressful social environment. Though economic development tends to make all societies more tolerant and open to gender equality and even somewhat happier, these findings suggest that cross-national differences in how readily these changes are accepted, may reflect genetically-linked cultural differences.

This research investigates the interrelation between subjective well-being components
and time perspective. Self-attitude is taken into consideration as a central aspect of well-being. According to the aims of the study, participants completed the Ryff Subjective Well-being Scales, The Lyubomirsky Subjective Happiness Scale, the Satisfaction with Life Scale, the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory and the Stolin Self-attitude Inventory. The sample included 93 university students, both men (43) and women (50) aged from 17 to 26 years old. Based on the correlational analysis, the association between subjective well-being aspects and time perspective is found: future-oriented people, who view their past in a positive way, have a higher level of self-respect, self-acceptance, selfunderstanding and self-guidance. Five time perspective profiles are discovered by cluster analysis: past negative-oriented (17,2%), future-oriented (24,7%), risk (18,3%), balanced (23,7%) and moderately present-oriented (16,1%). Subjective well-being and self-attitude scores are higher among participants, who achieved balanced time perspective and, therefore, have an authentic self-esteem. It’s important to mention that self-attitude scores are higher among the future-oriented sample. This fact can be explained the following way: this orientation serves a protective function, being based not on the real evidence, but just on hopes and expectations, taking into account the age of respondents.

On the 28th July, His Revered Majesty, the King of Bhutan issued a Royal Edict to formally convene an International Expert Working Group and its Steering Committee, with members appointed individually. The outcomes and results of the Working Group were to be presented to the United Nations during the 68th and 69th Sessions of the Generally Assembly in 2013 and 2014. The current report submitted to the 68th Session of the General Assembly in 2013 has been prepared by the Working Group on Happiness and Wellbeing, with the second report due to be submitted to the 69th Session of the General Assembly in 2014. The current report includes thorough literature reviews and examinations of existing best practices, to achieve a clear understanding on the actual, practical workings of the new paradigm and to provide practical suggestions on possible policies that can be put in place by governments around the world.

Vol. 11: Series: Studies in the History of Political Thought. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

The notions of happiness and trust as cements of the social fabric and political legitimacy have a long history in Western political thought. However, despite the great contemporary relevance of both subject, and burgeoning literatures in the social sciences around them, historians and historians of thought have, with some exceptions, unduly neglected them. In Trust and Happiness in the History of European Political Thought, editors Laszlo Kontler and Mark Somos bring together twenty scholars from different generations and academic traditions to redress this lacuna by contextualising historically the discussion of these two notions from ancient Greece to Soviet Russia. Confronting this legacy and deep reservoir of thought will serve as a tool of optimising the terms of current debates.

This research focuses on estimating the signalling role of education on the Russian labour market. Two well-known screening hypotheses are initially considered. According to first of these, education is an ideal filter of persons with low productivity: education does not increase the productivity of a person, but it does give him the possibility to signal about his innate productivity via an educational certicate. The second of these hypotheses admits that productivity actually does increase during the period of study, but nevertheless the main objective of getting an education is to acquire a signal about one's productivity. Information theory suggests that employees use education signals during the hiring processes whereby employers screen potential employees. Employers and other categories of self-employed workers are usually not screened by the labour market via their educational attainments. Comparison of the returns to education of employees vs. self-employed workers could show the difference between the returns to signals and the returns to human capital. Yet another way to understand the signals is to consider the time dynamics of the returns to education for employees staying in the same firm. This helps us to answer the question about whether the signals are valuable only during the hiring process, or whether they remain valuable during the whole experience with the firm. This research is based on the Mincerian-type earnings functions, estimated on RLMS-HSE and NOBUS data. On the basis of the available information, we cannot say that the returns to signals and human capital differ significantly in Russia. Nevertheless we can say that, for the majority of men, the return to educational signals decreases with time spent in the same firm, while we observe the opposite for women.

This article is talking about state management and cultural policy, their nature and content in term of the new tendency - development of postindustrial society. It mentioned here, that at the moment cultural policy is the base of regional political activity and that regions can get strong competitive advantage if they are able to implement cultural policy successfully. All these trends can produce elements of new economic development.